Italian Sausage sandwiches

Review by Lyndee:

1 pound ground Italian sausage

1 red pepper

1 yellow pepper

1 onion

2 tbsp minced garlic

Salt & pepper

Red pepper flakes

Mozzarella cheese

Marinara or spaghetti sauce

Hoagie rolls

Slice up peppers and onions and cook in skillet until they begin to get soft. In another skillet, brown your sausage and minced garlic. Season with salt, pepper and red pepper flakes.  Slice hoagie rolls and spread butter and sprinkle garlic on the inside. Broil until golden brown.  Add crumbled sausage. Cover with a few peppers and onions. On top of that put a light layer of marinara sauce.  Sprinkle with shredded mozzarella cheese.  Broil another minute until cheese melts.  

These are easy to make and delicious! 

Homemade Salt Scrub

It's Earth Week and my friend Jami is lean, mean and so very green. Ok, she's not mean but anyway...She shared this recipe for a homemade salt scrub that looks super awesome and easy to make.  If you're not following her Full Metal Body Fitness page on Facebook, you should be.  

Here’s an easy salt scrub recipe you can do at home in a few minutes and for very little money. Treating yourself to a salt scrub couldn’t be easier!

The Salt Scrub Recipe
The amounts of salt and oil in this recipe are rough estimates. You might need a bit more or a bit less. Experiment with the amount of oil you add to the salt. Most salt scrub recipes use fine sea salt, although I have also used coarse sea salt occasionally.

You’ll need
approximately a cup of (fine) sea salt
approximately half a cup of olive, sweet almond, jojoba or coconut oil (if you use coconut oil, it has to be in liquid form)
10-15 drops of essential oils – choose from the following or add your own favorite oils.

Choose 2-3 essential oils for your scrub:
detoxifying: Juniper, Grapefruit, Rosemary, Geranium, Lemon (all these are also great for an anti-cellulite salt scrub)
energizing: Rosemary, Grapefruit, Basil, Black Pepper, Ginger, Thyme, Peppermint, Eucalyptus
to boost circulation: Rosemary, Ginger, Black Pepper
great for all skin types: Lavender, Geranium

Gender Reveal Poem

My cousin sent me a request last week.  She is pregnant and was finding out the sex of her baby on Friday.  Due to work, her husband was not able to go with her so she wanted a fun way to reveal the gender to him.  She asked me to write a poem or letter to him, from the baby.  This is what I came up with. She put the poem on the outside of the box, without the last line or picture.  When he opened up the box, it was filled with pink starbursts to indicate Baby T is going to be a GIRL! Congrats!  

Apple Snicker Salad

Review by Lyndee

Grandma requested I bring a “simple salad” to Easter dinner.  This was just about as simple as possible and was a huge hit! It was easy to make, tasted great and was eaten up quickly. I have seen some variations where you add ½ cup of milk to the pudding and cool whip before mixing in the candy bar and apples.  I may try this next time. 

6 regular size Snickers Candy Bars or 12 snack size – I’m lazy and used 2 bags of Snickers Bites

4 medium apples I used Red Delicious

1 (5.1 oz.) package Vanilla Instant Pudding dry, do not prepare

1 (16 oz.) tub cool whip thawed to room temp

INSTRUCTIONS

Mix vanilla pudding packet and cool whip together until well combined. Chop up apples and Snickers into bite size pieces. Stir chopped apples and Snickers into pudding mixture. Chill for at least 1 hour before serving. If you like, you can drizzle with caramel topping.  

Peach Cobbler Dump Cake

Review by Lyndee

Easter brought lots of get togethers with family and I needed to call on some new recipes to jazz it up.  It was pretty good. I didn’t love it as much as the Apple Dump Cake but if you like peaches, you can’t go wrong with this easy dessert. 

Ingredients:

2 – 16 oz cans peaches in heavy syrup

1 yellow cake mix

1 stick butter

Cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Spray a 9x13 pan.  Dump in the peaches.  Cover with the cake mix.  Press down firmly.  Cut butter into slices and place on top of cake mix.  Sprinkle with cinnamon. Bake for 45 minutes or until the top turns golden brown.  Serve warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or cool whip. 

Note-I would melt the butter and pour on top of the cake mix next time.  Up the amount of butter if needed, but I think it would spread more evenly across the cake mixture. 

Bacon-Wrapped Teriyaki Chicken Skewers

Review by Lyndee

Ingredients:

1 lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts or thighs

8 oz. bacon, not thick-sliced

1 can pineapple chunks

Teriyaki Baste and Glaze (I like Kikkoman or LaChoy)

Kebab skewers or toothpicks

Cut chicken into bite-sized pieces. You can gauge about how many pieces you'll need by how many pieces of bacon you have; you probably won't use all the bacon, but you'll need about 8 oz. or 2/3 of a standard-sized package of bacon. So count the bacon pieces and keep that in mind when cutting up your chicken.

Drain the pineapple and set up a little work station with skewers, bacon, chicken, and a 9x13 baking dish (for big skewers) or a sturdy Ziploc bag (for toothpick skewers). Wrap a piece of bacon around a chicken piece, secure with toothpick/skewer, and top with a chunk of pineapple. Repeat twice if using large skewers.

When all chicken pieces have been sufficiently staked, pour Teriyaki sauce over everything, reserving about 1/4 c., and marinate in refrigerator for at least 4 hours, no longer than 8.

Preheat grill; when about 350-400 degrees, place skewers on grill and baste with reserved Teriyaki sauce. Cook about 7 minutes and flip skewers. Baste again and cook another 7 minutes.  If cooking in oven, preheat oven to 400 and bake about 20 minutes, turning once, following the same basting instructions.  If you use the oven, broil the kabobs for a minute to get the bacon crispy just before serving.

I was not a pro at wrapping the chicken with the bacon. So I ended up “weaving” the bacon along with the chicken onto the skewer. It tasted just as good and didn’t take nearly as much time.  These kabobs were awesome! Packed with protein and flavor you just can’t go wrong with these sweet little nuggets of fun. Note, my husband isn’t a huge fan of pineapple so I did a few skewers without the fruit for him but he said they were equally awesome.  

Spicy Pretzels

Review by Lyndee:

1 bag skinny pretzels sticks or knots

1/4 cup vegetable or popcorn oil

1 package hidden valley ranch dressing mix

1 teaspoon garlic salt (I used garlic powder instead)

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Directions:

Mix oil, ranch mix, garlic and cayenne together in a gallon size Ziploc bag.  Once mixed, add pretzels.  Shake well so that pretzels are completely coated.  Place in roasting pan a roasting pan or cookie sheet.  Bake at 200* for 1 1/2- 2 hours.  Stir every 20-30 minutes.

Super easy to make and a great snack for a party.